Visitor Arrivals for January 2009

With the objective to enable the public to obtain comprehensive data on the arrivals of visitors and other non-residents, the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), in collaboration with the Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) and the Public Security Police (PSP), provides monthly breakdown on the non-resident arrivals starting January 2009. To facilitate direct comparison, respective arrival figures for 2008 were re-compiled accordingly. In line with international practice, visitor refers to a person travelling to a place other than that of his/her usual environment for less than 12 consecutive months and whose main purpose of travel is other than the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited. Other non-resident refers to a person being neither a visitor nor a Macao resident, namely an imported worker, a foreign student, etc. Number of visitor and other non-resident arrivals was 2,464,374 in January 2009, with number of visitor arrivals totalling 1,913,344, up slightly by 0.8% compared with 1,898,709 visitors in January 2008. Analyzed by place of residence, 949,876 visitors came from Mainland China (49.6% of total visitor arrivals), down by 9.5% compared with 1,050,006 in January 2008. Among the Mainland visitors, 571,731 travelled to Macao under the Individual Visit Scheme, down by 3.8% as against 594,015 in January 2008. Visitors from Hong Kong (645,326) surged notably by 30.4%, while those from Taiwan, China (103,404) and Japan (31,855) decreased by 3.7% and 3.9% respectively. Furthermore, visitors from Thailand (20,924) and Indonesia (13,350) registered increase of 12.0% and 11.2% respectively. Same-day visitors accounted for 54.1% of the total visitor arrivals, at 1,034,700, with 527,585 coming from Mainland China. Analysed by mode of transport, visitor arrivals by sea totalled 801,548 in January 2009, up by 17.0% from 684,854 in January 2008, with 560,033 arriving at the Outer Harbour, a decrease of 12.2%. Visitor arrivals by land decreased by 8.4% year-on-year from 1,089,630 to 997,832 in January 2009; visitor arrivals through the Border Gate and the Checkpoint of CoTai were 920,975 and 76,857 respectively. Visitor arrivals by air were 113,964, down by 8.3% from 124,225 in January 2008. Number of visitors arriving at the Macao International Airport dropped by 9.6% to 110,912, with the majority coming from Taiwan, China (36.2%), Mainland China (28.6%) and Thailand (6.9%).